


Rock Cog Liquid:  Dawn of the Kittens

by HostisHumaniGeneris



Category: Original Work
Genre: Cats, Crack Treated Seriously, Gen, Just Add Kittens, Spies & Secret Agents, Technothriller, Trick or Treat: Treat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-30
Updated: 2018-10-30
Packaged: 2019-07-28 11:59:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,975
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16241171
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HostisHumaniGeneris/pseuds/HostisHumaniGeneris
Summary: After a too-long career in the military, engaging in the most highly secretive missions, Greg just wanted to retire in peace and own a bunch of kittens.  Unfortunately, his past has a way of getting in the way of that dream.





	Rock Cog Liquid:  Dawn of the Kittens

**Author's Note:**

  * For [DoreyG](https://archiveofourown.org/users/DoreyG/gifts).



Greg sat in his home, an unassuming cabin on the shores of a tiny lake in the middle of nowhere.  The sinking sun was casting longer and longer shadows through the narrow, high windows—the realtor had suggested renovations, big bay window to let in more light.  He gently told her no, but gave a muttered lie about not being able to afford much more than the house.

The real reason was that big bay window made for a good view from a sniper scope. 

He’d made plenty of enemies, and plenty of his… friends would probably take a shot at him, if only because he knew too much and chose to get out rather than stay in.  He wasn’t timid; he went out and fished and drove his beat up truck thirty minutes to town.  He’d be that “hobo looking guy who lives in the shack by the lake” to passersby when he stopped to pick up supplies or buy a round at the pub.  He was just averse to unnecessary risk, like big windows or letting other people into his life.

He took a swig of whiskey and wiped his mouth with his forearm.  Something thudded in an adjacent room.  The hairs on the back of his head stood up.  Slowly, minimizing noise, he got up, step by step and crossed his home, back pressed against the wall.  Slowly pushing the door ajar, he rushed into the room and struck.

He grabbed Sammy by the scruff of her neck and lifted, so that the calico devil was at eye level with him.  He grinned when he asked in his gravelly voice “What did you do?”

Sammy was the delinquent of his family, and he looked at the plate she had knocked off the counter, chiding her for being where she wasn’t supposed to.  He shifted his grip, holding her tiny body in the crook of one arm, stroking the back of her head with the other. 

When he returned to his chair and sat down, Sammy managed to twist around batting at his fingers with her claws.  When she ‘caught’ him and pulled his hand tight and started nipping, she purred.  Such a monster.

People were either threats or liabilities, doubly so when they were officially on your side.  Cats… you could trust them to be self-interested enough he could forgive their occasional psychopathic freakout.  Cats would never cancel an extraction behind enemy lines once it became clear the data you recovered was useless, never lied to you that the ‘rescue’ mission you were on was _expected_ to turn into an all-out gunfight, never hijacked a nuclear device and held the world hostage.

They would, he idly mused as Sammy flipped out of his grasp, bounced over to Ike, and smacked her sleeping brother right in his face.  Cats would totally hold the world hostage—but they didn’t have the thumbs to activate a nuke.

Ike briefly flipped, looking like every one of his limbs was going in a different direction, before hunching down, chasing the little Calico troublemaker out of his room.  He leaned back in his chair, idly reaching for a book.  The secondhand bookstore clerk had recommended some technothrillers, shit he didn’t care to read.  He politely declined, and instead asked about books on nature.

He’d read up plenty on cats since he left the military, his ‘retirement’.  With three rambunctious felines running around, he felt like he could write a book on them.  Right now he was branching out into other animals.  He flipped open the text on various species of _Crotalinae_ and began reading, irony be damned.  Just when he reached the place he marked when he put the thing down, a black, fuzzy lump materialized in his lap, head blocking Greg’s view of the pages. 

He sighed, and Princess looked up at him, wide-eyed, tongue hanging out.  He tapped the pad of his index finger on her nose, and she let out an indignant “Mrrrr?” and hopped off of him.  He returned his attention to the book, and Princess as back on the arm of his chair, then on his arm.  He tried to gently get his limb out from under her, which ended with her flipping out and falling off the armrest, only to bounce right back up and start chewing at the corner of his book until he held it out of her reach.

Another racket, and Greg got back up to see that somehow Sammy was tangled upside-down in the blinds, the look on her face indicating that clearly she did not foresee this occurrence.  Ike was on the floor, pawing at the blinds until Greg got too close, whereupon he bolted.

Extricating a flailing ball of fluff and claws from blinds was tricky, but he’d had worse.  Only the sounds of the birds and the plaintive whines of Sammy, who most certainly hadn’t learned her lesson.  One extricated cat later, and Greg returned to see Princess and Ike curled atop his book, sound asleep.

Sammy was chittering away, almost like she was trying to explain that clearly she didn’t really need the foodbringer’s help.  And it took Greg almost too long to realize the strangeness.  Aside from Sammy, it was quiet; something had spooked the birds silent.

Greg ducked and rolled behind his chair just as the front door was kicked in, two assholes with carbines stepping into his living room.  “Alright Sidewinder, hands up!”

He stopped being Sidewinder when he stopped killing for the government.  Stopped being their tool.  He was just Greg now.  The search would take seconds for them to find him, and every muscle in his body tensed.  This would end badly, unless…

The sounds of eight clawed feet skittering against the hardwood hit his ears as startled by loud noises, Princess and Ike took off like rockets.  The soldiers were clearly not suspecting a black and a tabby missile to streak across the room at mach one, and so let themselves be distracted.

That was enough.

The closest soldier caught a punch to the right orbit as Greg sprang, staggering him.  His partner tried to spin around, take aim, but in the close quarters he didn’t have time.   Greg grabbed the wrist that held the guns trigger, and wrenched, eliciting a cry.  Elbow to the nose that crunched cartilage, kick that moved the knee in a direction it wasn’t supposed to bend, and he was neutralized. 

His partner had recovered enough, but Greg reached, dragging him off balance and putting him in a chokehold.  He shifted managing to pry the man’s sidearm from its holster.  Making sure to drag himself clear from the door and behind the solid walls of his shack, Greg wheeled the pair around.  Where the backdoor was.  Two more emerged from the room, rifles raised. 

“It’s over Sidewinder!”

It _was_ over.  Whoever they were working for, Greg had stopped being a problem for.  What was this?  Revenge for a mission he’d accomplished?  His former bosses silencing a possible witness?  His mind cycled through.  The man he knocked out had a neck tattoo, looked like maybe Cyrillic, although that could’ve been a red herring.  Guns were M-4s, U.S. standard issue, but common enough with other users to be meaningless.  “Who sent you?”

The man he was holding blurted out a panicked “The Merchant!”

“The Merchant?!” Greg repeated.  An arms dealer, one that he was supposed to have killed, although given the clusterfuck that led to the mission ending with an unnecessarily large fireball, Greg felt it was possible that would come back to haunt him.

“Shut up you idiot!” One of the other soldiers said.  Then, immediately reconsidering he shrugged.  “He wanted to pay you back for Lichtenstein.”

“Lichtenstein?!” Greg repeated.  The mission to kill him was actually the second run-in he’d had with the Merchant; the first, in Lichtenstein had also ended in an unnecessarily large fireball, but that time the Merchant wasn’t even his target.

“Yes, he accepts attempts on his life as a cost of doing business, but he is still angry about you derailing Project BAKKER.”

“Project BAKKER… it can’t be.” Greg growled; it was something he’d never been briefed on, but had heard.  A nasty DoD Program that had become privatized and then taken over by the Merchant.  Rumors swirled.

“The program to create cyborg cassowaries.”

“Cassowaries?” Okay, that was a little ridiculous.  Greg had assumed it was a giant nuclear robot or something.  The soldier explained that _no_ , cassowaries were really scary, man, while Greg made a mental note to buy some books on them.  They were so wrapped up in talking about animals that nobody noticed Sammy until she leapt. 

The soldier had a few grenades dangling from his belt, clanging together slightly as he shifted his weight.  Sammy saw a dangly ball.  In seconds, the dangly ball fell from the man’s belt alongside a cat, who proceeded to get bored and wander towards Greg, probably to whine for food.

Greg looked at the grenade on the ground, then at the enemy soldier, then Sammy, whose whines were joined by her siblings.  He shoved the soldier he was using as a human shield forward, scooped up his furry little friends, and dashed out of the cabin while one of the soldiers said, dumbstruck “Was that a cat?”

Then the unnecessarily large explosion happened.

* * *

Greg collapsed into a chair in the room in the cheap hotel after limping in from the night.  He set the kitten down on the bed, whereupon it immediately hissed, stepped towards, then stepped away from Sammy.  It’d take some time to get them all used to the arrival.  He was thinking about ‘Star’ for the name, after the ninja stars that caused him to leap into the blind alley where he found the animal.  One harrowing fight later, and the little fellow had nosed right up to Greg, who couldn’t find it in himself to leave the cat alone on the stack of ninja corpses. 

“You know, pets aren’t allowed here.” Jimmy the Stoat said.

“I don’t give a fuck.” Greg growled as he scratched Star behind his ears as Ike padded, sniffed the outsider, and walked away dismissively.  Princess was on a nearby table, batting at a moth fluttering by a desk lamp.  Sammy yawned, curled up on Jimmy the Stoat, then jolted awake and started biting him.  Jimmy did nothing, whether it was the duct tape binding him to the chair, or just fear of what would happen if he disturbed one of Sidewinder’s pets.

“So, you’re back in D.C., and given that you 'invited' me over, I’m guessing this ain’t just a social call.” Jimmy said.

“You know everyone’s business, Jimmy.  Lobbyist, arms dealer, spy with a grudge, politician hoping to cover something up…” Greg said, scratching Star behind the ears briefly, until the cat began to nip and bat at his hand.  “I’m thinking you might know how to set up a meeting with the Merchant.”

“Him?!  What are you, trying to get yourself killed?”

“Well, he tried to kill me when I was just chilling at home, so if the worst he can do if I meet up with him is try to kill me…” Greg said, letting it trail off.  “So… will he be in town anytime soon?”

“Um… you’re not going to believe this…” Jimmy said, surveying the various animals across the room.

“Best hope I do.” Greg said, cracking his knuckles.

“He’s in town for the big cat show!” Jimmy whined. 

“Cat show?!” Greg asked.  Sammy perked up.  Ike curled into a ball.  Princess yawned,.  And Star had found a perch aboard the headboard of the bed.

“Yeah!  The Merchant, he’s really into cats, _runs the thing_.  Gonna be there to congratulate the winning feline.”

And Greg grinned.

There was work to be done.

**Author's Note:**

> Sidewinder is a totally 110% original character, do not steal. Also I dunno if it was apparent in the text but he had a kickass bandana on throughout the entire fic.
> 
> In all seriousness, I saw "grizzled soldier" who left the wars behind him and adopted a fuckton of cats, and Immediately decided this had to be a riff on Metal Gear with ridiculous amounts of kittens. Hopefully this was to your liking, requestor.


End file.
